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Scarlet milkvetch

Astragalus coccineus

Also called Scarlet Milk Vetch

Scarlet milkvetch
Photo: Chris Wagner, Public domain

Scarlet milkvetch is a clumpy, white-hairy desert perennial in the pea family, known for its large bright scarlet flowers in spring. It is a wild species rather than a common garden plant, and it needs well-drained, gravelly soil and full sun.

Family
Fabaceae (Pea & bean family)
Grows as
Shrub
Light
Full sun
Water
Water sparingly and let the soil dry out fully between waterings; it is adapted to desert rainfall.
Soil
Very well-drained, gravelly or sandy soil.
Temperature
Tolerates hot desert summers and mild winters; protect from hard frost.
How easy
Hard
Safety
Toxic: The whole plant is considered poisonous, as with other locoweeds, and can cause serious illness if eaten.
Native range
E. California, S. Nevada, W. Arizona, Mexico (N. Baja California)
Climate
desert or dry shrubland

About

Astragalus coccineus is a species of milkvetch known by the common name scarlet locoweed or scarlet milkvetch. It is native to the deserts, scrub, and chaparral of the Southwestern United States in Arizona, California, and Nevada, and in northwestern Mexico.

Where it grows

The plant is distributed throughout the desert mountains of east-central California, southwestern Nevada, northwestern Arizona, and northern Baja California. It can be found in gravelly soil in sagebrush scrub and pinyon-juniper woodland communities.

Other Astragalus plants

Astragalus aboriginum · Rogue River milkvetch · Sharp-leaved Milk Vetch · Sharpkeel milkvetch · Humboldt County milkvetch · Purple milkvetch · Cushenbury milkvetch · Astragalus alopecurus · Alpine milkvetch · Crescent milkvetch · Hermit Milkvetch · Anderson's milkvetch

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Astragalus coccineus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

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